Crm in Supermarkets

Consumers are always satisfied with good customer service. When it comes to retail store customer service and satisfaction it is important because department stores are large in size and finding help can be difficult. Colloquy, a company concerned with building customer value, released a survey and asked 3,000 consumers across five geographical areas to rate their personal experiences with retailers. Macy’s was ranked number one in the department store category, with the most loyal customers. To keep up with technology advances Macy’s has invested time and money into developing a more efficient online shopping site, Macys.com and Macysweddingchannel. This investment cost nearly $300 million in 2006-2008 is being used to scale-up these fast-growing businesses through improvements in delivery efficiency, online site functionality and customer service. To enhance the shopping experience at Macy’s 100 stores in 2007 experienced remodeling and began introducing the most advanced POS registers and systems to the sales floors nationwide. Macy’s passion is product and people. There continuing pursuit is to have unique fashionable merchandise ready for customer satisfaction. Macy’s promise is to always carry the best brands and the most-wanted items. They also believe in hiring the right employees. With the right employees, there will be a sense of motivation and helpfulness. The American Customer Satisfaction Index covers 200 companies’ products and

Market players generally have a wide variety of potential customers, which considerably weakens buyer power. Although consumers in this industry may be loyal to particular brands or chains, loyalty to retailer brands is arguably less important than competitive pricing. Many supermarkets run rewards programs for frequent shoppers, such as Tesco’s ‘Clubcard’, and these schemes can help companies retain customers and reduce buyer power.

Over the decades there were tremendous amount of challenges for every business. Customers have more knowledge, they have more options, and they have higher expectations. Customers are more informed with the humungous development in technology. Having more options in front of them, expectations has surpassed in retail industry. Loyalty is a customer having faith that your organization’s product or services offered is the best for them. It is the process of tapping the buying pattern of customers in a store based on their preferences. Customer loyalty is significant because it is economical to retain the old customers rather than acquiring new customers. So, organizations employ loyalty programs which reward customers for their repeat business.

Halagera also goes on to say “A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect on profits as cutting costs by 10%.” (Halagera, n.d.). This shows that keeping customers returning to Kulder Foods will increase business. The Frequent Buyer Program will promote repeat buisness in Kulder Foods and will aid in profit increase, so long as the customer is satisfied with Kulder’s Foods products and services. Although there are a lot of upsides to the Frequent Shopper Program, there are also concerns that Kulder Foods will have to take into account.

Every company wants to make money and bring in customers, but what about making loyal customers out of them so they continue to come back? How do you even bring in potential new customers and turn them into loyal customers to begin with? The lifetime value of a customer is a predicted value of net profit credited to the total future relationship of a customer. We want to know the financial value of each customer so that we know how much to spend in marketing when looking for new customers and the potential of profits back from the money in advertising spent. The grocery store chain must start looking at customers and how to make them happy and loyal in the long run, as opposed to how to boost sales right now. From the Marketing Management book, a well-known rule states that 80 percent or more of a firm’s profits come from the top 20 percent of its customers. Thus, we want to focus on brining in new customers with successful marketing and turning them into loyal returning customers.

The dominance of the market-economy worldwide, along with the subsequent rise of the Green Revolution, eventually led to the mass-shipment and globalization of food. In today’s interconnected society, the third- world produces for consumers within western Europe and the United States.(Guptill, Food Access) This market-driven desire to indulge in out-of-season crops fuels demand towards an industrial agricultural system that focuses on cash-crop monoculture (Guptill et al.,Global Food, 125-130).

One of the most necessary aspects of having a modernized society with specialized jobs is having an abundance of food. With many past innovations in food production, such as hybridization, advanced chemicals, and genetically modified plants, world food production has greatly increased. Even with all these new technologies, there still is production disparity between farmers, due to the different management

Many marketers agree that by reducing customer’s to competitors defection by only 5 per cent, companies can improve profits by anywhere from 25 per cent to 95 per cent. There is no question this will be a great advantage and could benefit any retailer. It is for this very reason why consumer’s relationship marketing and using tools such as loyalty scheme is

Trader Joe’s forgoes advertising for a strategy of customer relationship management because advertising “can’t create an experience. It’s the personal relationship with these people that builds loyalty” according to St. John, vice president of Trader Joe’s (Guth, and Marsh 183-187). Through this strategy, Trader Joe’s has seen much success. At the time of this case study, analysts estimated annual revenues to be around 3 billion. Today they are estimated to be around 8.5 billion. The effect is that the company has grown and still continues to grow. Trader Joe’s has gone from having 220 stores in 17 states in 2004 to 356 stores in 28 states as of June 2011 (“Trader Joe’s”). One area of attention for Trader Joe’s is to not lose sight of this customer relationship strategy as it continues to grow into a national or even global company. The company needs to continue to “pay attention to the information it

The US Food system has been likened to a lopsided hourglass; several farmers (producers), few input suppliers/intermediaries (processors), and several consumers. For the food system to be truly sustainable there must be a rational and optimized use of the natural resources that underpin food production and processing, such as labor, land, clean water, energy, and other agricultural inputs. Equally, reducing postharvest losses incurred at the various facets of the food chain howbeit on-farm and beyond the farm gate must be an essential component in any strategy to improve food security without increasing the burden on the natural environment. Failure in this regard would have long-term consequences for the sustainability of food production.

The commercial food system will not be replaced by the sustainable agriculture movement and locally grown foods, but it continues to gain momentum. According to Bird, G., & Ikerd, J. (1993), “Since the mid 90s, the sustainable

‘Customer Relationship Management is the ultimate challenge for marketing experts in any business. A successful company will use customer information wisely to build relationships with their customers, on the level that together they will work together towards a long-term relationship.’ (Xu et al. 2002)

In the guest lecture about food systems, there were multiple costs mentioned regarding “more oil dependant large scale farms producing huge amounts of one thing, which over-saturate local markets, secondly the emissions let out by the transportation of these foods” (Koch, March 12, 2015)

Parvatiyar, A. and Sheth, J.N. (2001), “Customer relationship management: emerging practice, process, and discipline”, Journal of Economic & Social Research, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 1-34

Class Group: Thursday, SEM004 16:30—17:30 Group Member: Leung Mei Wun, May (10626919D) Ngan Ho Shan, Iris (10571756D) Poon Wing Lam, Yvonne (10627025D) Wan Wing Tung, Yuki (10542306D) Wu Kit Wing Ophelia (10504166D)